What Do Britain’s Admirals Do All Day?
In a blog in 2015, I wrote about the huge number of senior officers in Britain’s supposed ‘armed forces’:
At the time, the Navy had 421 officers for fewer than 40 fighting ships and submarines. The RAF had 26 Air Vice Marshalls, 90 Air Commodores and 330 Group Captains for around 820 aircraft including just 89 fighters (most of the rest were small trainers and helicopters). As for the Army – there were so many officers and so few regiments we would put the Italian army to shame.
I also highlighted the lives of luxury our military bosses led at our expense – while ordinary troops risk their lives before coming home to collect their P45s and head off into a life sometimes of poverty, their officers were laughing all the way to the bank. In addition to their big salaries and generous pensions, the top 32 military bosses got over £156,000 a year each just in tax-free housing allowances. A further 390 officers received over £87,000 a year each.
Thanks to an excellent YouTube video by Mark Felton Productions, I have now come across the latest figures of how many admirals and ships we have in our once great Royal Navy. You’d weep if it wasn’t so farcical.
In 1939, the Royal Navy had 367 fighting ships, around 200,000 sailors and 53 admirals. That’s one admiral for every 3,773 sailors. In 2025, the Royal Navy has 25 warships (many of which are actually out of action being refitted or just lacking sufficient crew), 32,225 sailors (including reserves) and 40 admirals. That’s one admiral for every 805 sailors. I realise that today’s warships probably require fewer crew than ships in 1939. But applying 1939’s figures, we would only need around nine admirals for our much-shrunken navy, rather than the 40 we actually have.
Our 40 admirals are also rather expensive:
- 27 lowest rank of Rear Admiral – salary £108,201 to £119,000
- 10 Vice Admirals – salary £125,908 to £152,000
- Three full Admirals – salary £165,284 to £185,000
Few if any of our admirals actually go to sea as there are no large taskforces of ships to command. Here’s a list of our 40 admirals, vice admirals and rear admirals and all the wonderfully-creative job titles the Royal Navy has chosen to give them to justify their continued employment while most (all?) never go anywhere near the sea.
Moreover, the Royal Navy also has a 63 commodores. I’m not a military man so have little knowledge of what the Royal Navy’s different ranks do. But I assume that captains are generally those in charge of ships. Incidentally, the Royal Navy has around 260 captains for its 25 warships. So, in one of my more cynical moments, I might be tempted to wonder what most of the Royal Navy’s 40 admirals and 63 commodores and 260 captains actually do all day.
I recently wrote a piece for the Daily Sceptic about my rather disappointing attempts to interest the media specialists and regional offices at the National Farmers Union (NFU) in a story explaining what may be the real reason behind Rachel Reeves’s farmers inheritance tax. The decision of the NFU to ignore me and my Daily Sceptic article led me to wonder whether the £36 million-a-year, 817-employee NFU really was a lean, mean fighting machine selflessly battling every minute of every day for Britain’s farmers, or whether it had become a bloated, self-serving bureaucracy interested more in its own comfort and welfare than that of the farmers who so generously pay the NFU employees’ salaries and expenses.
Most readers will have heard of Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s law can refer to either of two observations, published in 1955 by the naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson as an essay in the Economist:
- Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion;
- The number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done.
Another version I have seen is that any bureaucracy grows by around 4% to 5% a year regardless of the amount of work, if any, needed to be done.
Perhaps what we’re seeing throughout our military and the NFU and almost every other British bureaucracy – government departments, regulators, health services, quangos, charities etc. – are Parkinson’s two laws in action. For example, the size of the civil service has risen in each year since 2016, when it stood at 384,000. It has grown by 129,000 in that time, a 34% increase (3.7% a year on average) over the last eight years. The continually-shrinking productive part of the British economy is being asphyxiated by the ever-increasing costs of our bloated, self-serving bureaucracies. Unfortunately we don’t have a Trump/Musk Department of Government Efficiency to cut out this cancer. In fact, Labour is rapidly increasing the size and cost of the public sector, setting up new quangos, advisory bodies and increasing hiring in its deluded belief that you can generate economic growth by extracting ever more money from taxpayers to give to the Government to waste.
National bankruptcy beckons.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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When I was a kid I used to love the British armed forces. I loved getting books on the latest planes and ships and technologies. And the Brits kept some aesthetic charm in the design of planes and artillery and even in the naming of ships after characters from Arthurian legend. I loved all of that and still would if it had remained whole and pure. It is very saddening to hear that no one wants to join the army anymore. Really demonstrates the betrayal of the young and our betrayal of our culture.
Regardless of how corrupted everything has become I will say that the best Brits work in the armed forces and the NHS and the two organisations work very beautifully together because the love is still there and they are the custodians of it.
But sack the managers…
Really. The best Britons? All public sector organisations have their share of incompetence, ans because they just spend money they can cover up that incompetence.
70% of most organisations are average of below average competence, and 30% are above, and carry the rest.
Have you actually ever met a senior officer in the military, or a senior director in the nhs? No, me neither. But it is good to know “the two organisations work very beautifully together because the love is still there znd they are the custodians of it”.
Parkinson’s law explains almost everything about anything. It’s far more useful as a concept than 42.
It seems rather top heavy
The UK ‘armless farces’ have what – 30.000 actual fighting men (well whatever they are called), and about 3 months worth of ammo and equipment? The Navy is in the worst state since what, the Dutch-Anglo wars of Charles II? I guess the ratio in your image is about spot on. Pension seeking bureaucrats shuffling paper.
Yet Starmtrooper wants to send UK forces to the US’ 51rst state formerly known as Ukraine. For no reason other than to murder young men (or whatever they are called) and start WW3. Maybe he can send himself and the other old, fat, white men who are making money off the laundering as the first regiment.
Brilliant
You shouldn’t feel smug or satisfied about the dreadful state of the armed forces. This is where it is at. And it wasn’t that long ago that we took pride in such things. You can’t just adopt some sod it slob attitude now. If you do that then you deny that our culture had beauty not that long ago. What do you want? Ship me somewhere east of Suez where the best is like the worst. Where there are no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst. You threw it all away in decades of slavish obeisance to the Yanks and now the poodle awakens to the horrific reality.
The only way to build it up again is to recognise the strengths of the English language, You would be surprised at how naive the Russians and Chinese are about Anglophone affairs regardless of their astuteness about everything else. There is something inpenetrable about it, the Anglosphere if you will. But I would cease and desist from this conrontation.
The lesson of the last few years has been most fundamentally the victory of cheap technology over expensive technology drones being the obvious example. The other lesson is the huge advancement in missile technology. The idea that you are going to have some standing navy enforcing a world order is absurd. Even the Yemenis can hit large American vessels. The lesson of the last few years is get the hell out of the water. Stick around and see what happens.
Well, I thought this article was odd and a bit nasty, and seemed to be in direct response to a comment in DS praising Sir David Davis, MP, and the British Armed Forces chiefs’ letter calling for a judicial review of the outrageous hounding and persecution of British Army Veterans from the Northern Ireland War.
So I looked up the author, and discovered that David Craig has written many fine books, but his real name is Neil Glass, and he once challenged MP Sir David Davis in the 2008 election, and seems to hold a bit of a grudge.
“In June 2008 Craig announced that he would stand as a candidate in the 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election, but came tenth out of 26 candidates, with 0.6% of the vote; the Conservative party’s David Davis won with 71.6%.”
Ambition: to be an MP – The Jewish Chronicle – The Jewish Chronicle
Neil Glass/David Craig admits that he is “not a military man”. Ex-minister David Davis intervenes in street attack near Parliament – BBC News “Former minister David Davis has confirmed he intervened to stop an attack on a rough sleeper near Parliament on Tuesday evening. The veteran Tory MP said he stepped in when he saw two men “kicking seven bells” out of another man on the floor. Guto Harri, the former No 10 director of communications, also helped stop the attack and said the intervention “prevented a man being killed”. Mr Davis told the BBC he let the victim stay on his sofa overnight to recover. The victim was still bleeding the next morning and was taken to hospital by Mr Davis. Mr Harri told the BBC he helped the victim while Mr Davis blocked the attackers on Great Peter Street. He said the attackers “were picking on a guy for a laugh, getting off on beating a guy who wasn’t hitting back”. “They had no sense of restraint. Had they not been stopped they might well have killed him,” he said. “It was deeply disturbing to think about what would have happened if we hadn’t been there. “David was… Read more »
Sorry mate, but you are barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t read anything in the DS about a letter written by MP David Davis. Here I just wrote a short piece suggesting that our armed forces are somewhat top heavy in senior officers which was based on the Mark Felton YouTube video. I don’t have a grudge against anyone.
I see you’ve met our resident one-man psychotic toxic clown show. His obsession with targeting individuals in order to falsely accuse them of things appears to be part of his diagnosis and is what happens as a result of being non-compliant with taking his meds, presumably. It’s nothing personal.
I enjoyed your article, anyway, because I’ve often wondered the same thing. It’s a real pity the Navy can’t patrol the Channel and defend the U.K from invaders, but then they’d need orders from above to do that and it’s rather obvious to all why that’s not happening. Meanwhile, the threats from hostiles increase as national security continues to go to pot, the safety and welfare of citizens not even on the priority list.
Interesting timing.
No. The timing is because I happened to see the Mark Felton video on YouTube and felt that it would be worth spreading the conclusions.
I read your book There is No Climate Crisis with great pleasure, well done.
Thank you
Well, they’ve got to keep an eye on their balance sheets, and then there are all the days annual leave they will be entitled to when the reach that grade, after all! Then again, some of them will be 24/7 shift workers, not just daytime office jobs.
Perhaps the high ratio of senior officers is partly to compensate for those on maternity leave (of both sexes).
What goes round, goes round. Shades of the Pirates of Penzance and the modern Major General…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs3dPaz9nAo
“…With sentimental pirates, blundering policeman, absurd adventures and improbable paradoxes, The Pirates of Penzance is Gilbert and Sullivan’s most popular comic opera.
A swashbuckling farce of brilliant humour and razor-sharp wit, it’s chock-full of memorable melodies, including the famous tongue-twisting patter song from the Major-General.”
I think this song from HMS Pinafore “When I was a lad” may be more relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfao1s3Tiek
Oh yes, a gem! Thank you (and thank you for the article).
Like your good self, Gilbert and Sullivan told it how it was.
The last hurrah of the old Elite. We are in a period of chaos before the new Elite take over but eventually they too will become patrons of a bloated, self-serving bureaucracy.
The obvious suggestion when comparing the 1939 and 2025 navy was that the 1939 navy probably had about 40 admirals who were really something like the CEO of a land-based navy-associated organization and another 13 actually commanding fleets. And some of these 13 were probably commanding naval bases which don’t exist anymore.
BTW, acting sublieutenant is not a rank of its own. It refers to someone who had had a field promotion to sublieutenant for some reason, ie, is doing the work of a sublieutenant on board of some ship, but hasn’t passed the necessary exam yet.
What do Rear Admirals do all day?
Rum, sodomy and the lash.
Best summed up as a Complete Waste of Money.
I believe some of the admirals are heading for the Black Sea … not!
An interesting statistic would be the number of bathtubs installed in the admiralty. The admirals could play with their imaginary fleets then.
A pal of mine is a retired Navy Commander who has gone on to work in compliance for large organisations – how to comply with legal requirement’s. He got the ‘heave ho’ recently, again, because his employers were frustrated by his inclination to comply with every single detail, manically, instead of what they thought his job was which would be finding the most efficient, and cost efficient, way of avoiding the expense and complexity of over regulation and ridiculous rules.
So whilst I am confident our high ranking tars and skates are all jolly fine chaps, (and no doubt a mixture there-of), I am not confident that they are, on balance, useful in any way at all.
They clearly have a gravy tanker in the fleet.
They collect their paychecks from the taxpayer. And then disappear off to their Club.
Poke your nose into the Coastguard. Bloated by bureaucratic largesse.
Loads of senior ranks compared to the nunbers in the front line.
Nice work if yoy can get it
I loved this article. I would imagine the Uk taxpayer has no idea the number of officers in the military, nor the overall cost.
looks like a job for a Uk version of doge.
DEI screwed RAF pilot recruiting by insisting white folks with flying aptitude needn’t apply since favour would be given to ethnic minorities and women. So bad was it that the female Group Captain responsible for recruitment resigned her commission in protest when the number of rejected applicants topped 160. Regarding the dilution of responsibility (RAF), it’s something that’s happened gradually since WW2. Sgt Pilots are a thing of the past, and Pilot Officers and flying officers are largely trainees only, with Flight Lieutenant rank having been reached by the time they qualify for Squadron operational service. A wing used be be led by a Wing Commander, Squadrons by Squadron Leaders and Flights by Flight Lieutenants. Alas, no more. (Mind you, that was in the days when we had aircraft).
Absolutely spot on couldn’t have put it better myself. I used to work in “the dreaded” Work Study/O&M department (often misnamed “Time and Motion”). We used to carry out Activity Samples especially in offices which involved taking readings of everyone’s activities at various short intervals throughout the day and usually over a “working”week. As a result we often heard comments like “oh you should have been here last week!” Because of our presence invariably they had finished their work by the middle of the week. We always checked the throughput figures against other weeks and often found we had actually visited during a busy week. Thus reinforcing the concept of both laws of Parkinson. As you can imagine we were very popular! Not!!!
Not much Motion, but it takes a lot of Time.
You can’t ignore the need to maintain the knowledge, skill and experience in the art of warfare. The British have been one of the best at making war over many centuries. There are large institutions and facilities whose specific purpose is to maintain this knowledge and transfer it to leaders capable of using it. The constant progress of new weapons and warfare requires constant training to develop and maintain that knowledge. Maintaining a large rank of officers and senior NCOs is critical to maintaining this knowledge and ability. As happened in 1914 and 1939 the country mobilized to drastically increase its weapons. Without having this knowledge and expertise in house and ready to go would have made this mobilization impossible and/or dependent on foreign powers.
Well said.
This is a shoddily researched article. Wikipedia gives the list of active ‘war vessels’ (ships and subs) of the RN as
in total, 58.
The RN website itself lists
total 67.
Quite a bit more than the 25 claimed in the text.
NB: I didn’t check details on the RN website beyond the ship/sub lists for each class.
I wrote “warships”!!!!! Coast patrol and river patrol are hardly warships. Just watch the Mark Felton video and educate yourself please.
I already figured something like this, however, offshore patrol vessels do global duty, eg, Falklands, that’s why they’re called offshore patrol vessels and even a group of ships for coastal patrols will need some sort of commanding officer and are boats designed for war, just close to the coastal waters.
I should have listed the auxiliaries as well, because while they’re not directly “for war”, they’re necessary for actual fleet operations.
So, in your experience, you need one admiral, more than one commodore and several captains for each coastal patrol vessel? Moreover, how many of our vessels are actually functioning and how many are being refitted or can’t sail for lack of crew? The whole thing is a total farce. Oh and our submarine-launched nuclear deterrent can manage about 200 metres before it plunges uselessly into the sea. If you can’t see that our navy has become a bureaucratic, impotent, expensive laughing stock, then I won’t try to convince you
Everyone on here, and the entire British public, are well aware of the deliberate, treasonous decimation of the entire Armed Forces of the UK, including the Royal Navy, by successive UK governments of every political hue, violating the will of the public, who never voted to destroy our own warriors, the very people who protect us, nor did the public vote to give our warriors substandard equipment and housing. The farcical state of our national defence has been decried by many in the military, many members of the public, and only a few politicians, all to no avail.
You are wrong to focus on just one aspect, trying to somehow blame the admirals, as you would no doubt similarly blame the generals in other branches, for what successive British politicians have done to the British Armed Forces.
Your article is unjust.
I already wrote that the RN surface fleet was mercylessly cut starting with the first post-war Labour government and strictly speaking, has only two actual warships, namely, the two carriers, as anything else is just an auxiliary vessel serving in lieu of a warship and that this led to a reduction in the number of admirals. But land-based facilities are not so easy to get rid of as ships and sailors and the commanding officer (still: think CEO) of anything the navy operates which is sort-of its own enterprise will have some kind of admiral rank. This effect is typical for peacetime forces, as the penny pincers will remove all active units which can somehow be removed, eg, Cameron getting rid of the remaining carriers because amphibious assault ships are also sorta big and thus, can certainly serve as flagship, until mostly only an administrative skull without a body is left. This skull is what enables the rump navy to function and would enable its eventual extension in case of a war. It can’t be cut away as well without having to rebuild the force from scratch in case it should again be needed. But the point of my comment… Read more »
Addition: Even referring to the carriers as warships is just sort-of a courtesy as carriers are also auxiliaries. What one would really want would be a fleet of battelships with auxiliary carriers for air defence and reconnaissance. This, one would need to move until its about 10 – 12 miles distant from one of these cute carrier battle groups the Americans tend to use and then, they’d turn the opposing carriers into metal confetti with heavy artillery as nothing that’s capable of movement through air or water will stop a 15″ or 16″ shell falling from the sky.
That would be really expensive, though.
Bureaucracy expands to fulfil the needs of the bureaucrats.